Thursday, August 19, 2010

Home ownership versus renting.

Peter Peterson claims that UncleSam should not be promoting home ownership. L.Randall Wray attacks PP for making this claim.

I rarely agree with PP, but on this point he is right. That there is no inherent merit in owner occupation as opposed to renting.

Levels of home ownership vary a huge amount across Europe as between different countries. And it’s certainly not exclusively the richest countries where home ownership rates or high, or poor countries where home ownership rates are low. For example Germany is one of the richest countries, but it has the lowest rate of home ownership! See “International trends in housing….” By Kathleen Scanlon and Christine Whitehead, p. 10.